Gospel according to the boys in blue: Welby retells Christmas story as police drama

Archbishop of Canterbury retells Christmas story for a congregation of
policemen, complete with drunk and disorderly shepherds, suspicious foreign
arrivals, crooked officials and a potential terror threat

It might not be the impression given by Christmas cards or stained glass windows but, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the birth of Jesus could have presented a public order “nightmare”.

Far from the idyllic gathering around the manger seen in millions of nativity scenes, the Roman authorities in 1st Century Bethlehem would have had to contend with seemingly “drunk” shepherds, suspicious foreign visitors, crooked officials and a potential terror threat, he said.

The Most Rev Justin Welby departed from the traditional approach to retelling the Christmas story when faced with a congregation of police officers at the annual Metropolitan Police Carol Service with a sermon which might not have been out of place in an episode of The Bill.

Instead of a straight narrative from one of the Gospels, he gave the congregaton at St Margaret’s Church beside Westminster Abbey a retelling of the story from the point of view of a fictional “Bethlehem Borough Commander”.

He referred to the high command of Roman administration in Judea as the Palestine “special branch” who would have viewed any possible messianic figure in similar terms to those in which police might view modern day extremists.

Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’s birth would have seemed like a “province full of terrorists”, with an influx of descendants of King David into the area for the Roman census.

Meanwhile the hills around Bethlehem were packed with shepherds with a reputation for hard drinking and bouts of violence.

“They grazed sheep over everyone else's land, and were prone to get stroppy if you argued,” he said.

“They were very poor and could not care less what people thought of them. They drank for Israel.”

Meanwhile the sudden arrival of suspicious foreigners in search of a worrying-sounding newborn king and an unexplained star likely to unsettle some of the more superstitious junior officers, created a possible “perfect storm” of problems, he said.

“There you have it – tension, politics, terrorists, crowds, parties, drunks and crooks in a huge confusion of unknown people in your small borough,” he said.

“It can't get worse, but like all things that can't get worse, it does.

“The shepherds do show up, and they show up clearly drunk, except they seem stone cold sober, but apparently semihysterical.

“Far from waving weapons, they are just waving their arms, going on about angels, and asking about new born babies."

In a departure from the Gospel narrative, the Archbishop said the commander might have had no choice but to send down a squad to isolate the stable where all the trouble would have been converging.

“Because it all looked so normal, that what it meant was overlooked by almost everyone, and still is,” said the Archbishop.

“Yet it was the moment when God broke in to our world in a completely different way.

“And everyone, including our mythical Borough Commander, missed the fact. He came to his own people, and they did not even recognise him.”